Sometimes serious, sometimes funny, always trying to be warmth and light, focuses on parenting, and the unique struggles of raising a large Catholic family in the modern age. Updates on Sunday, Tuesday and Friday...and sometimes more!

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

All I Really Wanted for Christmas was a Vacumn Belt

This past fall, we bought a new vacuum cleaner. My shop vac is awesome for the main floor but it stinks when it comes to carpet. So my husband obliged and purchased a new red dirt devil for me to leave upstairs. I assigned the kids to do their rooms. The machine lasted a week before the belt broke.

Naturally, there were no spares in the box. I penciled into my things to do, Home Depot for sometime that week and the belt number I'd need. I felt very savvy, having written down the pertinent information. As a double brainy bonus, I also noted the filter size. I could hear a prudent applauding me commending this forward thinking. "Might as well get the spare when you're there."

That Tuesday, my oldest had music lessons in the strip adjacent to the big hardware store. Again, the approving pragmatist persona gave a nod; merging a kid errand with an adult, how multi-tasking, how efficient, how marvelous. It was a great feeling. Then I walked in the store. They did not carry my vacuum's parts even though they sold my husband the machine itself. It was "too new." The helpful sales clerk offered to order me them but I'd have to buy a box of ten. The fiscally prudent me did not think this was wise. There were other stores where I could PROBABLY get the part. "But would I get the multi-tasking prudent bonus again?" I wondered.

It was Wednesday. One daughter and one son had basketball practice. Their gym was near my go-to store. Yeah! I'd have to get the kids to their team work outs on time but if I did, I could squeeze in a visit and still have that seamless parent thing going. Again, this store had many machines for cleaning floors, countless bags, filters and belts but mine was "too new." They could order me one, but it would take about three months. Visions of foot high dust bunnies creating an ethereal cloud of dander that would swirl about the ankles and choke off my toddlers filled my head. I'd try the third store. Going back to the car, the prudent me railed. "Two perfect errands ruined! Call ahead!"

I phoned information. I got the number. I called and spoke to a phone tree and then a human being who told me they did indeed have the part. Joyfully, I pressed forward, determined that this task would be completed today no matter what. I phoned my sixteen year old and asked him to heat up some potpies for dinner because I was running late. Virtue Mom was rolling. She'd directed dinner, she'd dropped off the kids for practice and she was going to get the belt.

I arrived at the store. The front was filled with beautiful glass chandeliers, this couldn't be the place for a .45 cent part for a hundred dollar sucking machine. A well dressed woman inquired my business and when I told her, she led me to the annex, where white pegboard covered the walls, and hooks were filled with every part for every dohicky imaginable. A man stood at the cashier with a phone. I asked if he was the one I spoke with just a few minutes ago. Blank stare. There were three other men stocking switches and tinkering with wires or working to fill orders on computers. I asked each of them. "You must mean Frank." one finally said. "He just left."

"Frank said you have the part I need. Belt 22 for a Dirt Devil.""22?" "There's no 22." "That must be new." was the chorus of responses.

One of them hefted a three foot thick notebook filled with punch hole tissue thin invoice forms. "You can look to see if we stock it through this." he explained. "But if it's new, I doubt it."

"Can't you do a search with your computer?" I asked."I haven't finished invoicing everything into the computer." one sheepishly answered. "We just stopped doing everything by hand this past year."

"Then how could Frank know you have the part?" I was feeling desperate."He doesn't, but he might be right." They nodded. One of them spit.

"Can we look at the vacuum belt section and just hope for the best?" I wondered aloud.

But alas, the search sans Frank was fruitless and I left defeated. They suggested I come back tomorrow when Frank was in but I was tired.

The Prudent Me got mad. "Sher, it's 2010. Order the damn thing online." I felt like the kid in Christmas Story remembering Santa; realizing his dream red rider bi-bi gun could become a reality.

Racing home, I helped the 16 year old take out the potpies and fired up the laptop. My fingers flew through the google to the first reliable large name brand store I could find that carried the part and ordered five but calmed down enough not to demand overnight shipping.

Three weeks passed. It got near Christmas. I jokingly and not so much, suggested that a working vacuum belt might be a good present. I made sure everyone knew the make, model and number needed but I didn't press the matter as I had already ordered five.

So now, it's January. The bill has come. The belts have not. The Prudent practical me and me are not on speaking terms and I'm considering purchasing another vacuum to act as the runner up to the Dirt Devil here that has failed in its duties. When I finally sucumb, when I finally do buy it, I won't leave the store without sixteen belts and five filters to go with it; and I know, the next day the parts will arrive at my home and Frank will call to tell me they have it in stock, because by then, the vacuum will no longer be "New."

The Chocolate Brain behind the Blog

My name is Sherry Antonetti. I write about the trials and humor of raising children, reflection articles on the Catholic faith lived, and profiles of everyday holiness. Why do I write on these things? To discover the deeper beauty of the martyrdom lived out moment by moment, and to avoid being discouraged or bogged down by minutia. Living out one's faith is an incremental experience of errands, stories, to do lists and details, it is not that we got to everything, but how we treated everyone in the process of trying to get to everything that reveals how much we live in the Holy Spirit, or how much we are estranged.

FAQ'S about this blog, a fabricated interview with footnotes.

Hi! Welcome to my blog. You can read my stuff here and at new.catholicmom.com. I publish there on Thursdays, with Small Successes!

FAQ's about this blog, a fabricated interview*

Q. Why CHOCOLATE FOR YOUR BRAIN?

A. You've heard of Chicken Soup for your Soul...well this is a similar principle. Chocolate, like laughter, produces endorphins in the brain, pleasant feelings, and that's what this blog is supposed to do.

Also, I have a pet theory about Comedy, that Good Humor is like a Chocolate Bar. It contains bits of nuts and a nougat of truth. The chocolate coating makes it go down easier, because no one wants to eat a bar of pure nougat.

Q. Why didn't you name your blog Chocolate for Your Brain in the URL?

A. Because I was new to the blogiverse and did not comprehend at that point how to make a blog much less market it, and therefore, I've just stayed with that URL which promotes my name but unfortunately tells the reader nothing about my blog or its clever title.

Q. It's your blog, why not change?

A. I'm a conservative Catholic, according to the news media, I fear change.

Q. That was funny! How do I leave a comment?

A. Scroll down to the bottom of the posted blog piece. It should look like this:

Q. How can I know if there's new stuff other than when you say you'll post?

A. At the bottom of the page, you'll see Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) Click on it and you can receive automatic email updates that the blog has been updated. I do promise to update it on Sunday, Tuesday and Friday otherwise, so you can just check those times if you'ld rather.

Q. Why do you write a blog, it's not like you don't have other things to tend to, other things to do?

A. I like writing. I like writing to make people laugh. It's good practice for my brain. Consider these stories mental gymnastics, less time consuming than soduku and more fun.

Q. Why aren't all of your articles from the Beaumont Enterprise or Catholic Standard linked?

A. What a thoughtful and observant question! Most of the pieces I've written for both of these publications were not posted on their websites, so I have no links to post. But I've also been at this for now 7 years, so if I linked everything, there would be nothing but links and that gets tedious.Thanks for letting me clear that up.

Q. Aren't I you?

A. Well, yes. But this format made it so much easier to explain everything. Thank you for your time, that's all the questions for today folks.

Sherry, you're doing a heck of a job!

Editor's note from the *. Despite similarities --monitoring communications and fabricating interviews, this blog is NOT affiliated with FEMA in any way.

Despite being satirical on occasion against the current congress and administraiton, this site HAS not been fact checked by CNN.

This blog is not a construct of FOX news, talk radio or a limb of the Republican party or any vast right wing conspiracy.

Thoughts expressed here are my own and not underwritten by the insurance agencies or any other soul free corporations. (Believe me, I'd know if I was being paid).

WAXY CHEAP CHOCOLATE SOLD AT HOLIDAY TIMES IN THE PHARMACY

I work and I write and I suffer but don't feel any guilt about it because You are worth it.

No.No. You don't have to get me anything for Christmas either.

Why?

Because I love you. Not just you but the whole Blogosphere and the whole Blogging world. That's right, I'm just a sentimental ball of mush, sort of like a melted whopper you find underneath the car seat because some kid in the Halloween Candy screening process found and rejected a piece without first offering the offending Chocolate to his mother.

I feel so used.

NOTE: CHOCOLATE FOR YOUR BRAIN UPDATES on Sunday, Tuesday and Friday! Updates are guaranteed by 5:00 pm that day or your money back. What's that? You didn't pay? Wait.... How does this thing work?

Let me know how I'm doing folks! You can email me at sherryantonettiwrites@yahoo.com

Quotables from Sherry's Brain

On pain...

"I don't need anesthesia if I can still crack a joke."

On the absurdity of everyday minutia...

"What Would Flannery O'Connor do?"

On Excellence where ever it is pronounced by an official, movies, politics, books, policies, people...

"If this is the best there is, then man are we in trouble."

On viewing my own karotype after a DNA screening test...

"My geneotype came back normal so all my faults are of my own doing."

On humor:

"Laughter is priceless but don't worry, all of this blog is free."

On what God will say to me one day...

"I gave you all these people, all these gifts. What were you doing blogging away time on the internet?"

My E-Book On Sale!

Click on this to get your copy of The Book of Helen autographed!

WRITING MY NEXT BOOK

The working title is The Book of Penelope.
Continuing the story, we will discover the internal odyssey the wife of Odysseus took from the day he left her side until she finally reinvited him into her heart.
Currently at 75K...and counting. Goal 500 words a day. Stay tuned...

Prayer to the Holy Spirit by Cardinal Mercier

O Holy Spirit, beloved of my soul, I adore You.
Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen me, console me.
Tell me what I should do; give me Your orders.
I promise to submit myself to all that You desire of me and to accept all that You permit to happen to me. Let me only know Your Will.